Rebellion and Riot

Popular Disorder in England During the Reign of Edward VI

John A. Andrew, III

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781612774442
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The short reign of Edward VI was a turbulent one, even by Tudor standards. The kingdom was threatened by widespread unrest, riots, and rebellions among the common people. In this study, Beer looks at these dramatic events from the viewpoint of the rebellious commoners. Above the clamor of the streets and countryside runs the intricate story of the interaction and often confusing relations among the commoners, the gentry, and the king's councillors in London.

A prince ought to take more care of his people’s happiness than of his own, as a shepherd ought to take more care of his flock than of himself. Certainly it is wrong to think that poverty of the people is a safeguard of public peace. Who quarrel more than beggars do? Who long for a change more earnestly than the dissatisfied? Or who rushes in to create disorders with such desperate boldness as the man who has nothing to lose and everything to gain?

Thomas More, Utopia

1.REBELLION AND POPULAR DISORDER IN TUDOR ENGLAND

The lost world of sixteenth-century England reveals itself through a variety of contrasting faces. Some we remember vividly, while others are merely vague shadows. The face of the Tudor monarchy is best remembered, and for centuries the deeds of kings, queens, and courtiers have formed the very essence of Tudor history. Few epochs have produced personalities rivalling Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Elizabeth. Intensive study of the monarchy, its institutions, and its laws has revealed a face of fascinating complexity. If the monarchy has a serious rival for the attention of posterity, it is the face of the church because of the revolutionary change unleashed by the Reformation. The establishment of the Church of England, the dissolution of the monasteries, the drama of persecution and martyrdom all loom large in the pages of history. The Tudors understood the importance of the monarchy and the church and wanted future generations to remember as well.

The sixteenth century had other faces — less romantic, less exciting faces — that also made a strong impression on contemporaries. There were the shadowy faces of the great majority of Tudor men and women, the yeomen, husbandmen, artisans, laborers, and servants, who comprised the commons of England. A hierarchical society expected the commons to work, pay rent and taxes, and obey the laws of the monarchy and church. The simple, contented face of the common man or woman dutifully fulfilling his small role in society frequently gave way to the face of hunger, the face of despair, and the face of anger. And anger often led to quarrels, riots, and rebellions. The rulers of Tudor England knew the face of rebellion and riot all too well, and they hated and feared what they saw. But when they recorded the history of their age, they chose to assign the commons to the margins of that history and to see their complaints and protests as ugly blemishes on the face of the body politic.

If contemporaries wanted one face of the Tudor age to be forgotten, it was the frightening face of popular disorder. The best interests of the crown and aristocracy required law and order, and while the privileged classes claimed for themselves the right to resort to violence when required, they agreed with the crown that the commons must be kept down. In maintaining order the crown and aristocracy could count on the support of the church, as its interests were also served by domestic tranquility. For centuries the institutional church prospered through its support of the state, but the church abandoned the more radical implications of the Christian Gospel, and by the sixteenth century became dependent on the crown rather than the Christian community as a whole for its protection. The clergy spoke for the church and favored close ties with the crown and aristocracy. The late medieval church may have offered the sure way to salvation, but during the long and troublesome years that constituted mankind’s sojourn on earth, the institutional church taught little beyond acceptance of one’s lot in life and obedience to lord and master. If the commons turned to politics, they found that the late medieval constitution offered few opportunities for effecting change and obtaining redress of grievance. Parliament was an assembly of landlords and royal officials, while the justices of the peace governed the countryside in their own interest. As the Tudor political system did not encourage popular participation in government, the alternative was often direct action, namely rebellion and riot.

The remarkable success of the Tudors in controlling and repressing popular discontent, particularly in comparison with the preceding Lancastrian and Yorkist era and the century that followed the death of Elizabeth, gave rise to the notion that their government served the best interests of all. The Tudors wished to be remembered as benevolent sovereigns ruling over a happy and contented people, and generations of historians accepted their claims at face value. Sharing the outlook of Tudor intellectuals, modern historians preferred to study the sixteenth century from the top downwards, to examine the policy of ministers of the crown, and to participate vicariously in the seductive pleasures of courtly life. In these pursuits the commons were of little importance, and the protests of the inarticulate together with the unruly behavior of the rude multitudes were merely unfortunate obstacles blocking the progress of culture and good government.¹

Although disorder was abhorred and banished from the minds of decent, God-fearing subjects, rebellion and riot were as much a part of Tudor England as the divorces of Henry VIII and the ill-fated romances of his daughter, Elizabeth. Each of the Tudor sovereigns faced at least one major rebellion and countless smaller disturbances and conspiracies. Henry, Earl of Richmond was himself a successful rebel who deposed Richard III and founded a new dynasty. Little more than a decade of Tudor rule had passed when the Cornish, much grieved by taxation in support of a war with Scotland, revolted against Henry VII and marched to Blackheath before suffering defeat. In 1536 the Pilgrimage of Grace defied the authority of Henry VIII. This rising, centered in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, embodied a complex variety of political, religious, and social issues.²

The counties of England and Wales.

The most menacing rebellions of the century occurred between 1548 and 1549 when over half the counties in England seethed with angry social and religious protests. Traditionally seen as two separate revolts — the Western Rebellion in Cornwall and Devon and Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk — the risings were actually more extensive and had much in common. The commons and their leaders claimed loyalty to the young King Edward VI but defied the policies of his uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector. Somerset’s government, strongly influenced by religious and social reformers including Hugh Latimer, Sir Thomas Smith, and John Hales, aroused mistrust from many gentry and commons. Lacking confidence in the central government, local leaders were hesitant about enforcing its laws and upholding order. Conflict between court and country ensued as local communities and leaders attempted to thwart the Protector’s reforms. Polarization also took place within the church, where Protestant bishops, supported by Somerset and the Council, pushed aside defenders of the Henrician religious settlement. Conservative bishops suffered imprisonment while their adherents among the parish clergy turned to rebellion. Throughout the length and breadth of England the upper gentry and town oligarchs encountered vigorous popular opposition as the commons protested against a host of local grievances: enclosure of common pasture, rising rents, and the enforcement of Protestant religious reforms. Leadership of the commons came from the lesser gentry, yeoman farmers, parish priests, and artisans of whom Robert Kett, the Norfolk tanner, was the most energetic.

The rebellious commons suffered defeat in every part of the country at the hands of the king’s army. The embittered aristocracy sought a scapegoat for the costly risings and in October 1549 deposed Somerset as Lord Protector. His agrarian policy was misconceived and ill-executed and his leadership indecisive in the face of the rebellious commons, but until midsummer when the whole country teetered on the brink of disaster his government enjoyed at least a measure of support from the Privy Council and the aristocracy. Only when Exeter was under siege and Robert Kett defeated a royal army and occupied Norwich was it easy to see the failure of Somerset’s policies. The vengeance of the aristocracy was not confined to Somerset, for the defeated commons suffered savage repression as the countryside was pacified. The Council, under the leadership of John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, turned to policies that combined repression with cautious financial and social reform. As in the past, the government assigned a higher priority to protecting the privileges of the propertied classes than to satisfying the grievances of the commons.³

The overthrow of Somerset and the execution of Kett and other rebel leaders signalled the end of the Edwardian rebellions but not of popular discontent. Riots and smaller popular disturbances continued until the king’s death in 1553. Better harvests, greater price stability, and above all the vigilance of the Council and local leaders prevented recurrence of a major rising. Edward VI had been dead less than a year when Sir Thomas Wyatt recruited and led a large rebel army to the walls of London at Ludgate. Opposition to Queen Mary’s decision to marry Philip of Spain prompted Protestant leaders to plan risings in the West, the Midlands, and the Southeast. Only in Kent did the commons rally to the standard of rebellion in significant numbers. Yet Wyatt’s Kentish rebels might have successfully deposed the queen if support from London had been forthcoming.⁴

Rebellion played a smaller role during the reign of Elizabeth, but even Gloriana felt the sting of revolt in 1569 when the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland restored the Latin mass at Durham Cathedral, called for the arrest of Sir William Cecil, the queen’s leading adviser, and demanded the restoration of Roman Catholicism. Less threatening than the mid-Tudor rebellions, the rising of the northern earls revealed the deep-rooted discontent of the aristocracy and its tenants. The last rising of the Tudor era took place in 1601, only two years before the death of Elizabeth, when the Earl of Essex, frustrated by his loss of royal favor, led 200 supporters up Fleet Street, London, in a desperate and futile attempt to restore his political ascendancy.⁵ A survey of Tudor rebellions leads to the inescapable conclusion that every rebel captain whether artisan or earl and every popular cause — religious, political, or economic — suffered defeat. What is remarkable and usually overlooked by historians is the courage of generations of Tudor rebels to resist oppression and go down to defeat in the face of overwhelming odds.

Although popular disorder was endemic throughout the sixteenth century, the pattern of rebellion and riot was extremely diverse. The rebellion of Henry Tudor in 1485 began as a royalist conspiracy against the Yorkists, and the dynastic interests of the Courtenays and Mary Stuart played important roles in later risings. When political opposition to the Tudors was not dynastic, it usually included conflict between court and country. For example, the northern aristocracy in 1536 and 1569 and the western gentry in 1549 vigorously opposed policies emanating from the court. The leadership of Thomas Cromwell and William Cecil aroused regional discontent; remote counties feared centralizing reforms of all kinds; and in 1549 the western gentry saw the Edwardian Reformation as little more than the program of court politicians supported by a clique of heretical clergy. After Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 1530s, religion emerged as a divisive issue that fired political and social instability. Only under Edward VI did Catholics and Protestants rise at the same time. Religious unrest during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth came primarily from Catholics opposed to the royal supremacy, the monastic dissolution, and innovations in the church, while Mary’s opponents were exclusively Protestant. Real or imagined social and economic grievances played a part in many rebellions, particularly the Cornish Rebellion of 1497, the Pilgrimage of Grace, and Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk. Riots almost always stemmed from economic issues; frequently heard grievances concerned rent payments, food prices, enclosure, and property rights.

Popular disorder would be easier to understand if it were possible to write an equation showing the interaction of rational political, religious, and economic motivation. Unfortunately the minds of Tudor rebels and rioters were not so logical as modern historians would like. The commons’ political perceptions were affected by an imperfect understanding of the past and a limited comprehension of the present. Loyalty to a powerful magnate could cause a tenant or servant to join a rising in which he had no legitimate interest. Naive and credulous commons fell prey to rumors that excited the emotions and clouded the mind. Prophecies, as Keith Thomas has shown, were employed “in virtually every rebellion or popular rising which disturbed the Tudor state.”⁶ Vague and ambiguous prophecies purported to foretell the future and frequently encouraged resistance to government policy. Thomas has also delineated important links between orthodox Christian beliefs and magic, astrology, and witchcraft. The occult influenced men and women of all ranks and degrees, and confused seemingly clear-cut divisions arising from the Reformation. Mischievous priests often persuaded ignorant commons to favor a course of action that served only the interests of a clerical faction or religious party. Social and economic issues — poorly understood by the best minds of the century — also evoked responses from peers, gentry, and commons that conflict with modern views of enlightened self-interest.

As Tudor rebellions had diverse and often contradictory causes, so too was there diversity of leadership. Because the Tudor dynasty was founded on usurpation, the kings and queens had most to fear from cousins with royal blood in their veins and nobles whose offspring were potential claimants to the throne. Although the victims of Tudor justice included the Duke of Buckingham, the Marquis of Exeter, the Duke of Suffolk (father of Lady Jane), the fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Mary, Queen of Scots, such persons were more important as symbols around which the commons might rally than as actual leaders of rebel forces. The nonroyal peerage made a larger contribution to Tudor rebellions. Lord Audley led the Cornish in 1497, Lord Darcy joined the Pilgrimage of Grace, and the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland raised the North against Elizabeth. Every major rebellion received support of one kind or another from the landed gentry or from mayors and other town officials. The most famous of the gentry were Robert Aske, Humphrey Arundell, and Sir Thomas Wyatt. The mayor of Bodmin in Cornwall was a major participant in the Western Rebellion of 1549, while the mayor of Norwich protested that he assisted Robert Kett only to protect the city. If there is a common characteristic to be found among rebellious peers, gentry, and urban officials, it is alienation from the crown and court. Living in remote counties, denied lucrative offices and a respected place in the counsels of the monarch, hostile to the official religion of the day, these frustrated members of the Tudor aristocracy sought to reassert themselves through alliances with the commons.

Before any rising could attract attention from outside the locality where it began, it had to arouse enough popular support to challenge the maintenance of order by justices of the peace and other local officials. The support of the commons, those who ranked below the gentlemen, determined the strength of every rebellion. Ranging from prosperous yeomen to the very poor living on charity, the commons varied enormously. If we accept Lawrence Stone’s estimate that the peers and gentry comprised about 2 percent of the population,⁷ the commons made up the other 98 percent. Yeoman farmers, a numerous and thriving class in the early sixteenth century, formed the buffer dividing the commons from the aristocracy. Husbandmen, like the yeomen, occupied a family farm but worked less land and kept fewer livestock.⁸ Ranking below the peasant farmers came agricultural laborers, who made up about one-fourth to one-third of the total population.⁹ Artisans and apprentices filled the towns and villages, while servants worked in the households of the aristocracy. The number of poor and unemployed commons increased during the mid-Tudor period. In the towns John Pound estimated that as much as one-third of the population was “below ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Revised Edition
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Rebellion and Popular Disorder in Tudor England
• Chapter 2: The England of Edward VI
• Chapter 3: The Western Rebellion
• Chapter 4: Robert Kett and the Commotion in Norfolk
• Chapter 5: The Pacification of Norfolk
• Chapter 6: All Other Parts of the Realm
• Chapter 7: London
• Chapter 8: The Struggle for Stability
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index